“If the deal is officially dead, we now believe BCE would consider buybacks estimated at between $300-million and $400–million in addition to pension solvency funding,” Mr.Huang told clients in a note. “However, the announcement is unlikely to come until the new year.

The CRTC denied approval for BCE’s acquisition of Astral earlier this month, saying it was not convinced that the transaction would provide overall benefit to the Canadian broadcasting system.

BCE said it will ask the Federal cabinet to review the decision and Thursday elected to postpone the Outside Date for the proposed acquisition to December 16. Either Astral or BCE can further extend the Outside Date to Jan 15, 2013, and even later if mutually agreed upon.

Mr.Huang believes chances of saving the deal are slim, echoing other analysts who cover the company including Maher Yaghi at Desjardins Securities

“Overall, we are disappointed that the Astral acquisition will not proceed as expected, and we have removed Astral from our forecast, as we believe the odds of its takeover have significantly diminished, Mr. Yaghi said in a recent note.

“However, we do not believe BCE’s dividend growth model was predicated on this deal being finalized,” he added. “As a result, we believe BCE should be able to maintain its current 5% dividend growth model.”

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